Talk:Half-Life 2: Episode One

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The citation is in: "Steam Update News" (June 15, 2006). Valve Corporation. [1].

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[edit] half-life EP1 on the ps2?

http://www.g4tv.com/xplay/reviews/1184/HalfLife_2_Episode_One.html read it.

I think they just messed up. It's definitely a review for the PC version. Besides, having already put HL2 on the Xbox, if Valve were to make HL2:E1 into a console title, it would either be the Xbox, or the 360. --UNHchabo 03:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
So here's the full deal: Valve is releasing HL2:E1, along with HL2, on the PS3 and on the Xbox 360 as a package deal with Episode 2.[2] --UNHchabo 23:27, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BS also didn't include any new multiplayer content.

"Unlike previous additions to the Half-Life family, Episode One offers no additions to any multiplayer games." - This statement is incorrect as Blue Shift did not include any new multiplayer content, although it did include Opposing Force Multiplayer with new maps, that where not included with OPFOR's original MP, however these where available freely elsewhere to players. EP1 includes HL:SDM which is basically HL:S minus SP. Therefore, I think that statement should be changed.

I changed the intro. Qjuad 22:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Breen/Combine advisor host-body "theory" references

I removed the entire referenece to the Breen/Combine advisior host body "theory" for three main reasons: 1. The "reference" cited is a forum thread 2. Dr. Breen was talking to a Combine advisor before being chased away by Freeman and Alex. The perspective in the recording shown would indicate that it is from the viewpoint of the same Combine advisor he was speaking to, in the same room that the advisor was present - due to the fact that Breen is staring directly at the screen. Therefore, isn't it more plausible to assume that it is simply the same Combine advisor "making a break for it", not Dr. Breen? 3. The aforementioned posting refers to a "Breen laugh"...playing the game I, myself have never heard of such a laugh, and several repliers to the same thread also discount it's existence.

Scott 110 01:45, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Please do not remove stuff like this just because you don't agree with it. In these situations Wikipedia is for documenting ideas, not coming up with the perfect answer - that would be biased, and not encyclopedic. The section is headed "Critical speculation", and the host body theory very much falls into that category. If you want to discuss it, do so at the forum thread referenced. Perhaps when you have convinced people that it isn't true the section can be removed, but for now it is a part of Ep1's mythology. --Tom Edwards 06:58, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

You sir have just contradicted yourself. If YOU want to discuss that theory, you should take it to forums. The theory has no backing towards it, and makes zero sense. Maybe when there is more evidence for the theory in question (reference in gameplay) then it would be deserving of a place in the Wiki. Furthermore, the Wiki states "among the theories" implying that there are more theories dealing with the game. What makes this one so special, especially when it holds no water? I am removing the reference to the theory. Anonymouses 08:27, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

If it pleases you, the entity name for the advisor is something along the lines of ai_controller_breen. While you are correct that giving precedence is biased, that does not justify the removal of information. You're turned it into a generic passage on story criticism in internet communities, which is really quite useless. --Tom Edwards 10:01, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Backstory

Hey guys, I'm thinking that the Backstory section is repetitive and unnesessary. However, I think that it would be cool if we could convert it into a "list" of things that can be learned from Dr. Kleiner by listening to his broadcast. What say you?--67.172.204.135 23:08, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, since nobody has answered, I'll just take that as a "yes". ;) --67.172.204.135 22:00, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Half-Life 3?

If these episodes really were a substitute for Half-Life 3, then shouldn't they have been called 'Half-Life 3: Episode ___'? This makes no sense. In 20 years, people will be looking to get the complete HL series, and it'll just be Half-Life 1, 2, and then 4.

If there will be a HL4, that is (and if they're still being played in 20 years--most games don't last even half that long). Valve could always change their mind as well and eventually release a HL3, or even release a combi-pack of all episodes under the nominer HL3. -- Jordi·✆ 08:11, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


No. They are not a substitute, but look at it this way: Valve created Half Life 1. It's the first minor "story-arc" (compared to the overall arc that is the yet-to-be-complete Half Life saga). They then create Half Life 2, which is the second minor arc. Coming upon the continuation of the saga, they ran into a bump; they could either extend the Half Life 2 arc under the Half Life 2 name, with a subtitle, or they could call it Half Life 3. The three episodes are big enough to be a full game, but having HL1 as one arc, and HL2 and HL3 a different arc would confuse people. Keep the same arc in the same game number. In an attempt to help you out, think of it this way: Half life 2 cut up into three parts, and sold as episodes 1-3. Episodes 1-3 currently are changed to episodes 4-6. This is what Valve meant, not that the episodes are HL3, and that there will be no HL3. It's just that they had enough CONTENT to make it a whole new "sequal" but wanted to keep those story-arcs linked. I'm sorry if some of my wording confused you, though. Anonymouses 08:36, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Secret weapon

If you enter "hopwire_vortex 1" and then "give weapon_hopwire" into the developer's console, Freeman gets a secret weapon called the Blackhole Grenade. CompIsMyRx 19:50, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removing the link to the Half-Life Story Saga Guide

I noticed that this Half-Life Story Saga Guide is included in the external links. However, there was request on Gordon's article talk page some time ago to remove a link to the same site with the reason that it was misinformative and downright wrong in most cases. I agree with this notion and I think that the link to the Saga Guide here should also be removed. It conflicts greatly with information given here in these articles and with official sources direct from Valve. MarphyBlack 02:51, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Marc Laidlaw has gone on record to give it his support and to say that it is by and large accurate (there's probably a link on the site somewhere), and it was referenced alongside this article in the Valve news update linked at the top of this talk page. I don't agree with some of his later stuff, but that's interpretation and not fact. --Tom Edwards 07:54, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I emailed Marc Laidlaw about this and he told me he made that statement when he first saw the site only very shortly after Half-Life 2 was released, back in late 2004/very early 2005. He only read it that one time. Considering the amount of material the guy has added since then, and the clear realization that his site conflicts with sources from Valve and Laidlaw's word itself, Laidlaw's original statement would no longer be properly applicable to the site in its current state. For example, the site claims that the Combine were ruling Xen at the time of HL1 and that they made some sort of deal with Breen to intentionally cause a resonance cascade. This contradicts information given by both Doug Lombardi and Marc Laidlaw, both of whom are quoted saying that the Nihilanth was at war with the Combine and that he had sought refuge in Xen where the Combine had not (or had yet to) invade (Both quotes are in the Combine article here). Also, the HL2 Official Prima Game Guide states that the Combine were first attracted to Earth by the portal storms, which are said to have been caused by the death of the Nihilanth. This conflicts with that Saga Guide, which says that the Combine had wanted to invade Earth all along, since even prior to the events of HL1. The Saga Guide also states that the events of Half-Life 2 take place 10 years after the original game. However, the official Episode One site says "Gordon emerges from the darkness, nearly two decades removed from his last conscious thought". Believe me, there's plenty more I could bring up, but for the sake of keeping this talk page under 30kb, I'll refrain from that for now.
Anyway, aside from the blatant misinformation, the site hardly fits the qualifications of Wikipedia. It's a lot of baseless speculation and theories (All stated as if they were fact, not clearly made out as opinion) made by one guy who doesn't even bother to try and source any of his information. I have tried to contact this Ventro person with the intention of helping correct the many, many errors on his site, but he has yet to reply to me. I have talked with many other Half-Life players who have tried to contact him before but were unsuccessful as well. They believe that he either doesn't read his emails or that he simply ignores them. There's no hope in trying to salvage this story guide. In the interest of not undoing all the fine work that the many contributors of Wikipedia have made to the Half-Life articles (People working from fact, citing their sources and references, etc), I believe the link to this highly erroneous site should be removed. MarphyBlack 12:20, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

(All stated as if they were fact, not clearly made out as opinion) Did you even read his page? On the site, on the FAQ, the last question is as quoted: "B-9 I completely disagree with pretty much everything on here! It's absolutely preposterous!" Please remember - everything on this site is simply my interpretation of the events. It's the analysis of the story, and how it logically fits together given all the information we have. If you disagree, please, I urge you to create your own guide :) However I do agree that it does not belong on Wikipedia due to it being a massive theory. Anonymouses 08:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The front page of the site states, "The Half-Life Saga Story Guide was created in order to provide a concise, accurate, user-friendly overview of the events dealing directly with the events of the Half-Life Saga, and allowing users to easily get a better understanding of the story behind the games." In my opinion, (knowingly) feeding people outright misinformation is not what I would consider helping people understand the story more, much less be 'accurate'. That little question he threw in at the end of his FAQ does not really make up for the fact that he's showing off an old and outdated quote from the actual HL writer declaring the site as being "pretty darn accurate". If he seriously intended for his entire site to be clearly considered as nothing more than one man's interpretation (or raving lunacy, as it may be) of the game, he could have done so much more to make this obvious (Like, not calling it the "Half-Life Story Saga Guide" as if it was some official guide). MarphyBlack 23:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Exaggerated moaning"? It's very pertinent if HL2ep1 is unstable.

I strongly object to the removal by user Tom Edwards of my link to a lengthy Steam forum thread wherein players are reporting very frequent crashing and locking up of the game. And this is just one of many such discussions on the official Steam support web site as well as elsewhere on the Web. Given the large number of such reports from people running it with a wide variety of systems and graphics cards, and the apparent absence of a straightforward solution, there is fairly good evidence that there are bugs in the game itself that can greatly interfere with gameplay. This seems very worthy to me of being mentioned in the article. In the Wikipedia article on Knights of the Old Republic II, for example, a similar controversy is prominently discussed.

There are millions of people owning Ep1. Even a thousand of them with issues is a fraction of a percent of the total, considering that everyone in the world can congregate to the exact same place and talk about it. Go to the forums of any popular game you consider stable and you will see a wealth of people complaining about problems. It's an illusion inherent with PC games. --Tom Edwards 11:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
It has been reported before that many of the "Steam unlocker" and "No Steam" cracks can make the Source engine extremely unstable (among others at romsteady.net—Michael Russel is the support guy for the Source-engine game Emergence). I wouldn't be surprised if the same applies to HL2EP1: the ones with problems are thieves and therefore are running unstable, non-patched versions. A quick browse through the Steam forum does not reveal any tech support cases for HL2EP1 instability, just exaggerated moaning. Personally I don't know anyone who bought HL2EP1 and has problems, contrasted to a good number of people who own and play it without any instability (myself included). -- Jordi·✆ 12:04, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Total agreement with both Jordi and Tom - Episode One is not an inherently unstable game, and thus I'm not sure it would be appropriate to mislead people who read the article into thinking it is. Qjuad 12:34, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Personally I've had no success getting it to run w/o crashing, and I have a store-bought copy, so I'm not that confident that it's bug-free. But I agree a more authoritative reference than people complaining in a tech support forum is needed to merit inclusion in the article Krotos 20:39, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to second that, Krotos. I bought this game fair and square and had no problems with previous titles. I dislike Steam as a program but I've certainly never tried to remove it and I resent the suggestion that I am in some way a 'thief'. However the 'exaggerated' moaning on the Steam forums is one of the longest threads to be seen on that website; it's no small problem and whether or not that still leaves only a few thousand players affected by the bug(s) in question is irrelevant - it's big enough to mention on Wikipedia.

[edit] The Critique?

Are you jokers gonna put the "I'm still seeing Breen" music video on the Halflife 2 article next? (209.158.52.154 19:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC))

Unfortunately there hasn't been much of a machinima community buildup around Source because of the (formerly) terrible FacePoser documentation. If it ever kicks off, that video and others would be something I'd want to add. --Tom Edwards 20:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambig with Star Wars Episode I

I don't see why an article named Half-Life 2: Episode One could possible be confused with Star Wars: Episode I. Episode One is not even a redirect: it is a disambiguation page. Therefore there is in my opinion absolutely no need to point to the Star Wars movie from this article. -- Jordi·✆ 12:43, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Entirely agree. That there's a disambiguation page should mean adding a link to SW:E1 here is completely redundant. No-one is going to wind up at HL2:E1 when they meant to go to SW:E1 (unless they click on the wrong link on the disambiguation page; hardly our concern). Cheers, --Plumbago 12:54, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and turned Episode I and Episode One into redirects to Episode 1, and the same for II/Two and III/Three. Also changed the disambiguation text. We only need one disambiguation page per episode number (if that!). -- Jordi·✆ 12:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Episode 1: Puzzle over Action: Gravity Gun abuse

I think in Episode One, Valve killed the entire concept of making gameplay "balanced" meaning that you would have to earn a special weapon later on. For instance, does anyone feel that receiving the Gravity Gun in the beginning of the game ruins the whole fun of using other weapons, which has few ammunition compared to Half Life 2. Also, why does the Gravity Gun have to have unlimited "beam" ammo. I expected better from Valve's weapon creations. Compare Half Life's Gauss Gun to the Gravity Gun. You will find a major difference in terms of which weapon is balanced while the other is overpowered in certain areas.

Droideka88 01:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The "purple" Vortigaunts

Commentary nodes 2 and 3 in Chapter 1: Undue Alarm both make mention that the colour of the Vortigaunts is simply part of a warping effect. Greg Coomer even specifically states they were aiming for a psychedelic look. I would argue the belief they are actually purple is speculative. Wouldn't it be odd, anyway, for Valve too introduce a new group of Vortigaunts who are completely identical to their counterparts...but purple?. Qjuad 16:43, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't have the game on hand, but I believe they explained that the effect was a refraction shader - not that it was turning green vorts purple. Similarly, the fact that they were aiming for a psychedelic look doesn't mean that the colours aren't representative, certainly not that they aren't worth mentioning. And lastly, no, not at all. :-p
Perhaps the best way of looking at this is asking what people are going to think when they see purple vorts. Are they going to think "oh, those vorts have been recoloured by the unexplained spacetime distortion", or are they going to think "oh, a new kind of vort"? Consider too that the scene's other elements (Alyx, backgrounds, Gman) don't take on the vorts' hue. --Tom Edwards 18:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Not sure I agree with the conclusion, but your reasoning makes sense. I'll leave the statement in the future. Still...purple?! Qjuad 18:42, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Half-Life 2 Episodes Article

This has been discussed before, I know, but I wanted to refer to a recent news. It was said that Episodes One to Three would be a story arc, and that there would be an Episode Four. Why don't we make an article of the Episodes with that in mind, dividing it in the known arcs? Just a suggestion.

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